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Meme History: Ermahgerd

Haven’t you ever made a face like this before?

Photo of Kyle Calise

Kyle Calise

Ermahgerd meme

In each edition of web_crawlr we have exclusive original content every day. On Saturday our Video Producer Kyle Calise explores the origins and history of the most iconic memes online in his “Meme History” column. If you want to read columns like this a day before everyone else, subscribe to web_crawlr to get your daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.


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Imagine backpacking through a foreign country, and getting a text from your mom asking why your photo is all over the internet. Then coming home to find out that a photo you took 13 years prior was in fact, social media’s hottest new meme.

It’d be enough to make you say Ermahgerd.

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Origins

In 2012, 16-year-old Jeff Davis, better known on Reddit as /u/xWavy, was scrolling publicly visible Facebook and Myspace photos and stumbled across this one: An old polaroid from the late 90s of then-10-or-11-year-old Maggie Goldenberger playing dress up with her friends—one of whom had posted it online.

In Body Image

On March 14 at 9:35 AM EDT, he posted it to /r/WTF, with the title “Just a book owner’s smile…

Normally these sorts of things take a day or so to marinate before they get popular, but in this case, less than four hours later at 12:59 PM a link to a Quickmeme post using it was added in the comments by a user who gave it the caption, “GERSBERMS MAH FRAVRIT BERKS.”

Or: “Goosebumps, my favorite books.”

According to an interview with Vanity Fair, he was inspired by South Park’s Shelly. An hour after that original post, he posted that same image to /r/AdviceAnimals, where it earned 17,000 upvotes in two weeks.

Maggie wasn’t aware of this immediately. At the time, she was away in India on a backpacking trip, and only found out when her mom messaged her confused as to why people from her high school were posting it, and then when it came up on her newsfeed.

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Spread and Naming

In the following two days, it found its way to FunnyjunkI Can Has Cheezburger, and YouTube, where the poster “Berks Gerl” narrated the caption.

That June a Gif of opera singer Malena Ernman singing “Flight of the Bumblebee,” was going semi-viral on Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur and the like. It was often titled “Ermahgerd! Cluhrnet!

The similarities between her and Berks Gerl were obvious, and so, by the following year, Ermahgerd the meme had explodedQuickmeme, for example, had over 4,000 unique Ermahgerd submissions featuring Maggie’s now-iconic photo in that first year.

The “why” of this meme really shouldn’t require a lot of explanation but in case it’s not obvious, Ermahgerd is popular because of its immediacy. The idea of someone who dresses that way, who reads nerdy Goosebumps books, who makes that face, actually talking that way is pretty hilarious.

Spin-offs and Inspiration

Over time, Ermahgerd has become one of the most ubiquitous memes on the internet. The Animal variants are countless, as is the merch on AmazonEtsy, and anywhere else you can shop online.

In 2017, when a category 3 hurricane named Irma hit the Florida coastline, evacuees made Ermahgerd graffiti on their way out

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In Body Image

Trick or Treaters can look up Ermahgerd Halloween costume guides. And in 2012 The Nerdist released a music video featuring Paramore’s Hayley Williams. It starred Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch as Berks Gerl and featured cameos from both Swedish Chef and R.L. Stine.

Berks Gerl’s Identity

By March of 2012, the internet was trying to figure out who Berks Gerl is in real life. According to the same Vanity Fair article that revealed the South Park inspiration for Berks Gerl’s speech pattern, an anonymous bounty hunter found out it was Maggie Goldenberger, and posted an image of her online.

Over in /r/AdviceAnimals, a post with a photo purporting to be of her in the present day was captioned “Ermahgerd I’m hot.”

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It was quickly followed by a discussion about its authenticityIt was not Maggie

However, a friend of Maggie’s brother did begin posting more images of and information about her to Reddit, which was a little too much and too fast.

In a 2020 video with BuzzFeed, Maggie said that he was basically outing her and her girlfriend’s relationship by posting that much information online and that it felt like an invasion of privacy. It contributed to Maggie not trying to make a career out of the meme, and opting to continue to be as private a person as was reasonable.

But all in all, Maggie seems to be cool with the meme. It was a photo taken in jest, and it’s remained that way. If anything, she hopes that her fame is an inspiration to kids to read more.

Ermahgerd that’s such a wholesome message.


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